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Chapter 9

She went down, turning, as the metal ring Thrakell had pitched against the overhead window strip to deflect her attention clattered to the floor. The Fossily bag on her back padded her fall. Thrakell, plunging toward her, came to an abrupt stop five feet away.

"You almost made it!" Telzey said softly. "But don't you dare move now!"

He looked at the gun pointed at his middle. His face whitened. "I meant no harm! I—"

"Don't talk either, Thrakell. You know I may have to kill you. So be careful!"

Thrakell was silent then. Telzey got into a sitting position, drew her legs up, looked at her ankles and back at Thrakell. The thing that clamped her legs together, held them locked tightly enough to be painful, was the round white cord which had been wrapped about his waist as a belt. No belt—a weapon, and one which had fooled Essu and his search instruments.

"How do you make it stop squeezing and come loose?" she asked.

It seemed there were controls installed in each tapered end of the slick white rope. Telzey told Thrakell to get down on hands and knees, stretched her legs out toward him, and had him crawl up until he could reach her ankles and free her. Then she edged back, got to her feet. The gun had remained pointed at Thrakell throughout. "Show me how to work it," she said.

Thrakell looked glum, but showed her. It was simple enough. Hold the thing by one end, press the setting that prepared it to coil with the degree of force desired. Whatever it touched next was instantly wrapped up.

Telzey put the information to use, and the device soon held Thrakell's wrists pinned together behind him.

"Now let me explain," he said. He cleared his throat. "I realized the circuit exit of which you spoke must be somewhere nearby—probably in this room! I was afraid you might have decided to use it and leave me here. I only wanted to be certain you didn't. Surely, you understand, that?"

"Just stay where you are," Telzey said.

The key packs she carried evoked no portal glimmer anywhere in the big room. The one which had transported her here probably had been destructured immediately afterwards. So there'd be no emergency escape open to her now by that route. Part of one of the walls of the adjoining room had been blasted away, down to the point where its materials were turned into unyielding slickness by the force field net pressing against them.

Telzey looked at the spot a moment. There had been a portal there, the one by which the three Alattas had entered. But Stiltik's search party had located it, and made sure it wouldn't be used again. No other portal led away from the room.

She went back into the big room, told Thrakell, "Go stand against the wall over there, facing me."

"Why?" he said warily.

"Go ahead. We have to settle something."

Thrakell moved over to the wall with obvious reluctance. "You haven't accepted my explanation?"

"No," Telzey said.

"If I'd wanted to hurt you, I could have set the cord as easily to break your legs!"

"Or my neck," Telzey agreed. "I know you weren't trying to do that. But I have to find out what you were trying to do. So get rid of that blur over your mind, and open your screens."

"I'm afraid that's impossible," Thrakell said.

"You won't do it?"

"I'm unable to do it. I can dispel one pattern only by forming another." Thrakell shrugged, smiled. "I have no psi screen otherwise, and my mind evidently refuses to expose itself! I can do nothing about it consciously."

"That's about what I told Stiltik when she wanted me to open my screens," Telzey said thoughtfully. "She didn't believe me. I don't believe you either." She took Essu's gun from her pocket.

Thrakell looked at the gun, at her face. He shook his head.

"No," he said. "You might have killed me after I tripped you up. You felt threatened. But you won't kill someone who's helpless and can't endanger you."

"Don't count on it," Telzey said. "Right now, I'll be trying not to kill you—but I probably will, anyway."

Alarm showed in Thrakell's face. "What do you mean?"

"I'm going to shoot as close to you as I can without hitting you," Telzey explained. "But I'm not really that good a shot. Sooner or later, you'll get hit."

"That's—"

She lifted the gun, pointed it, pressed the trigger button. There was a thudding sound, and a blazing patch twice the size of her palm appeared on the wall four inches from Thrakell's left ear. He cried out in fright, jerked away from it.

Telzey said, somewhat shakily, "That wasn't where I was aiming! And you'd better not move again because I'll be shooting on both sides . . . like this!"

She didn't come quite as close to him this time, but Thrakell yelled and dropped to his knees.

"Above your head!" Telzey told him.

The concealing blur of mind patterns vanished. Thrakell was making harsh sobbing noises. Telzey placed the gun back in her pocket. Her hands were trembling. She drew in a slow breath.

"Keep it open," she said.

Presently, she added, "I've got what I wanted—and I see you're somebody I can't control. You can blur up again. And stand up. We're leaving. How long have you been working for Boragost?"

Thrakell swallowed. "Two years. I had no choice. I faced torture and death!"

"I saw that," Telzey said. "Come along."

She led the way from the room toward the portaled sections. She'd seen more than that. Thrakell Dees, as she'd suspected, hadn't joined her with the intention of getting out of the Elaigar circuit. He couldn't afford being investigated on Tinokti, particularly not by the Psychology Service; and if the Service learned about him from Neto or Telzey, he'd have no chance of avoiding an investigation. Besides, he'd made a rather good thing out of being a secret operator for Boragost. As he judged it, the Elaigar would remain securely entrenched on Tinokti and elsewhere in the Hub for a considerable time. There was no immediate reason to think of changing his way of life. However, he should be prepared to shift allegiance in case the showdown between Boragost and Stiltik left Stiltik on top, as it probably would. The return of Telzey alive was an offering which would smooth his way with Stiltik. He'd hoped to be able to add to it the report of an undiscovered portal used by Alattas.

Under its blurring patterns, Thrakell's mind was wide open and unprotected. But Telzey couldn't simply take control of him as she'd intended. She'd heard there were psi minds like that. Thrakell's was the first she'd encountered. There seemed to be none of the standard control points by which a mind could be secured, and she didn't have time for experimentation. Boragost hadn't found a way to control Thrakell directly. It wasn't likely she would.

She said over her shoulder, "I'm taking you along because the only other thing I can do at the moment is kill you, and I'd still rather not. Don't ask questions—I'm not telling you anything. You'll just be there. Don't interfere or try to get away! If I shoot at you again, I won't be trying to miss."

There were portals in the string of sections she'd come through which led deeper into the circuit's sealed areas. At least, there had to be one such portal. The three Alattas had used it in effecting their withdrawal; so had Stiltik's hunters in following them. It should open to one of the keys that had been part of Tscharen's pack.

Telzey found the portal in the second section up from the big room, passed through it with Thrakell Dees into another nondescript place, dingy and windowless. A portal presently awoke to glimmering life in one of the walls. They went on.

The next section was very dimly lit and apparently extensive. Telzey stationed Thrakell in the main passage, went into a room, checked it and an adjoining room out, returned to the passage, started along it

Slight creak of the neglected flooring—and abrupt blazing awareness of something overlooked! She dropped to her knees, bent forward, clawing out Essu's gun.

Thrakell's strangle rope slapped against the passage wall above her. She rolled away from it as it fell, and Thrakell pounced on her, pinning her to the floor on her side, the gun beneath her. She forced it out, twisted the muzzle up, pressed the trigger blindly. There was the thudding sound of the charge, and a yell of alarm from Thrakell. Something ripped at the Fossily suit. Then his weight was abruptly off her. She rolled over, saw him darting along the passage toward the portal through which they'd come, knew he'd got one or both of her key packs.

She pointed the gun at the moving figure, pressed the trigger five or six times as quickly as she could. She missed Thrakell. But the charges formed a sudden blazing pattern on the portal wall ahead of him, and he veered aside out of the line of fire and vanished through a doorspace that opened on the passage.

Breathing hard, Telzey came up on her knees, saw one of the key packs lying beside her, picked it up, looked at it and put it in her left suit pocket. The pocket on the right side had been almost torn off, and Thrakell had got away with the other pack. Something stirred behind her. She glanced around, saw the white rope lying against the wall a few feet away—stretched out, shifting, turning with stiff springy motions, unable to grip what it had touched. She stood up on shaky legs, reached down until the gun almost touched the thing, and blasted it apart. Thrakell wasn't going to be able to use that device against her again—this time it had been aimed at her neck.

She started quietly down the passage toward the doorspace, gun held ready to fire. No sounds came tion, and she could pick up no trace of Thrakell's camouflage patterns. She didn't like that—she wasn't sure now he mightn't have tricks he hadn't revealed so far.

She stepped out before the doorspace, gun pointing into the room behind it.

It was a rather small room, as dimly lit as the rest of the section, and empty. Not-there effect or not, Thrakell wasn't in it; after a moment, Telzey felt sure of that. There was another doorway on one side. She couldn't see what lay beyond it. But if it was a dead end, if it didn't lead to a portal, she had Thrakell boxed in.

She started cautiously into the room.

Her foot went on down through the floor as if nothing were there. She caught at the doorjamb with her free hand, discovered it had become as insubstantial as the floor. Falling, she twisted backward, landed on her back in the passage, legs dangling from the knees down through the nothingness of the room's floor . . . through a portal.

She discovered then that she'd hung on to the gun. She let go of it, squirmed back from the trap, completely unnerved.

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Framed